Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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Saturday, February 20, 2016

“Parents have the most grave obligation,” reads the Code of Canon Law,
“to do all in their power to ensure their children’s physical, social,
cultural, moral and religious upbringing.” In other words, our grave
obligation as far as the Faith is concerned is comparable to our
obligations regarding food and shelter: Provide what is necessary for
our children to thrive and flourish – to give them a good start on making it on their own.
“Why?” Fr. John Hardon asks of this grave obligation to form our kids
in the Faith. “In order to prepare them for eternal life in heaven. The
only reason under God that parents even should bring children into the
world is to prepare them for heaven.” Thus, it’s not my job to keep my children on the straight and narrow trajectory toward eternal life, but rather to prepare them for undertaking that task themselves.

For insight on how to carry out that grave duty, let’s
turn to Dreher again. He writes that the average American Catholic
worshiper “may find himself having to hold on to the truths of his faith
by exercising his will and his imagination to an extraordinary degree,
because what he sees happening around him does not convey what the
Church proclaims to be true.” This might be news to Dreher and the folks
at Pew Research; it ain’t news to the Church.

Indeed, it’s been that way from the beginning, starting with the
Apostles themselves – including especially St. Peter, the first pope and
betrayer-in-chief. There’s always been a disconnect between the visible
Church – the one we ourselves inhabit in the here-and-now, the one with
fallible, petty, sinful human beings in it like you and me – and the invisible Church “spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners,” as C.S. Lewis
described her. Using the voice of Screwtape, a senior demonic tempter,
Lewis goes on to characterize the Christian’s experience of that
disconnect in this way:

One of our great allies at present is the
Church itself. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic
erection on the new building estate. When he gets to his pew and looks
round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has
hitherto avoided. Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of
tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the
patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be
somehow ridiculous.

Sound familiar? Of course! It’s a great description of what the average Catholic has to go through every weekend, and it’s precisely
why “exercising his imagination and will,” as Dreher puts it, is so
crucially important. We’ll always come up against hypocrisy and dryness
in the practice of the faith, regardless of location or epoch. Yet if,
with God’s grace, we persevere – imagining that God might succeed in making even us saints and willing
to seek after truth no matter the cost – then neither circumstances nor
setbacks can ultimately deter us. “If once they get through this
initial dryness successfully,” the more seasoned Screwtape warns his
demon apprentice regarding a young Christian, “they become much less
dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.” (Read more.)

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